People working on or near marine electrical systems

Emerging electric ship technologies create the possibility of integrated 100+ MW electrical systems. At the same time, electric power demands continue to grow, pulling engineering innovation further for passenger, cargo, military, and platform situations. In the near term, major technical challenges to successful systems interoperability persist at a scale to date unknown in civilian or military electric power installations. While technical designs bring new solutions, the humans working with emerging technologies bring old problems. Across two hundred years, power at sea has evolved far more dramatically than people have changed. Here we identify biologically-based performance limits which might directly constrain the engineering of on board high power density operations. We consider human factors related to marine electrical power delivery from multiple perspectives. In the accompanying discussion, the question whether or not an engineer´s decision causes human error and systems failure, is addressed.